1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to online commerce and, more specifically, to systems and methods for configuring and managing computing resources to provide highly-scalable services.
2. Description of the Related Art
The advent of cloud-based computing architectures has allowed for the rapid and scalable deployment of services, such as virtual stores, media outlets, and other online services. In general, a cloud-based architecture includes a set of resources such as processors, operating systems, software and other components that can be combined to form systems on which services can be deployed.
A user can request the instantiation of specific set of resources from a management system to deploy a service. For example, a user may wish to set up and instantiate a virtual server from the cloud to create a storefront to market products or services on a temporary basis, for instance, to sell tickets to an upcoming sports or musical performance. In a typical cloud-based architecture, the user needs to be aware of the specific resources that are needed to deploy a service from the initial stages of service development. The service is often developed in a manner that is closely dependent or coupled to the specific resources on which the service is to be deployed. In addition, to deploy a service, the user typically configures the specific resources based on the configuration requirements of the service.
One drawback to such cloud-based architectures is that the user spends a considerable amount of time on the infrastructure level details, such as configuration, when deploying the service in the cloud. In addition, since the service is developed according to the specific resources and not in a generic manner, the development cycles for developing services that can be deployed on such cloud-based architectures is undesirably long.
As the foregoing illustrates, what is needed in the art is a mechanism for deploying and managing services in a cloud with minimal effort from service developers.